I thought I would start a thread regarding X1 info that is shared at Build.

Day one didn't show much, but they did have a demo of Project Spark and started the beta sign up for that.

The Day 2 keynote has been more interesting for new info. During their many demos, they showed off an app that was running via windows 8 and then pushed that same app to the X1. They pointed out that since the X1 shares windows 8 core, all of these apps are possible and showed how easy it is for devs to work on apps going to the X1 via Visual Studio.

They summed up the conversation by saying that if you want to get a head start developing apps for the X1, then create a windows 8 app.

They also mentioned the Unity engine and how it is supported on the X1 so that game devs could build a single game using Unity and push that across a windows 8 pc or the X1.

Pretty interesting stuff that could lead to a real advantage for the platform. What we still are waiting to hear is how the store will work for the X1 and what guidelines devs have to follow to publish to the X1.

They're teasing what I expected, the Xbox Store will basically be a tweaked Windows Store. I think that the only key changes one has to do to their Windows 8 app or game is to make sure it supports Xinput and maybe some screen res changes to better support TVs though WinRT does a good job of scaling on it's own.

They haven't talked about the model yet and how developers can target the X1 as far as cost and how the Xbox Store will be but the fact it's basically the same core code as Win8/8.1 I'd say they're going to use the same overall revshare model unless a game developer wants to use/support Xbox Live in their game. Few more hoops to jump through in that case I'm sure.

One thing they did talk about on Day 1 that you missed was the new DirectX 11.2 tile feature. Though it's not exactly a new idea it is new to DX and hardware supported. Basically allowing developers to swap higher res textures when needed on the fly without taking up all of the GPUs vram/resources in the process. And it's part of Win8.1 and the X1 so it sounds like a key feature and the reason why they haven't went with a pure speed hardware solution like Sony with the PS4 and GDDR5.

I'll see if I can find a link to the whole story, but the part I saw was breaking down how they distribute hardware resources in multiplayer online scenarios among thousands of servers. They talked about gaming assets that are calculated and served via these servers in those situations.

The initial use for the new Live cloud service to developers is for dedicated servers in MP but it can be extended beyond that and allow the developers to do more scripted things in MP. Like instead of having a preset map for a MP level that you just keep running around over and over with little change they can go in and make changes at any time since the whole this is up on the server now. That's where the scripted bit comes in, titanfall devs talked about it a bit. You can also easily have more users in the map without much impact since unlike with the 360 it's not a player that's hosting the game but a Xbox Live server(s). The first big thing should be larger 32v32 or 64v64 MP matches becoming the norm on the X1. But I see no reason it can't go as high as a dev wants it, costs become a factor at that point.

This isn't directly from Build, but it was reported today that MS has dropped all fees on game developers regarding updates or recertification after a failure. That means no more fees have to be paid to submit a patch.

This is great news for those smaller devs that were having problems with that fee this gen.

It was during the keynote. I'll try to find the time, but was during a demo of an education app.

They were working in Visual Studio, showing its code, then pointed out some tags in the code that said Xbox. The presenter went on to point out how the apps could work across devices including the Xbox thanks to their shared core. They did a demo where they showed the app running on an X1 and the presenter made live changes to the app from his pc within Visual Studio, showing that devs could debug apps on any device via their pc and update them live thanks to syncing with Azure servers.

It was during the keynote. I'll try to find the time, but was during a demo of an education app.

They were working in Visual Studio, showing its code, then pointed out some tags in the code that said Xbox. The presenter went on to point out how the apps could work across devices including the Xbox thanks to their shared core. They did a demo where they showed the app running on an X1 and the presenter made live changes to the app from his pc within Visual Studio, showing that devs could debug apps on any device via their pc and update them live thanks to syncing with Azure servers.

oh ok cool. ill try to find it in the video then,i guess I may have taken a call briefly and that was when it happened quickly.

Awesome news from Build. So much for the people who kept saying there would be no xbox info in Build.

The Win8/X1 universal app development is as expected though, but great news nonetheless.

And lets hope they put some regulations in place to prevent developers from releasing buggy crap with repeated patched like Fez without the fees. though it's a good thing they can afford to fix their f-ups, but lets not make it a license to be lazy developers.

ok I transcribed that part of the video, thanks again trooper for catching this bit

Marc Whitten talked at E3 about the fact that Xbox One has two engines. Its got a gaming engine,and it essentially has a Windows 8 engine. And so,you can go back and forth between those two engines. Now, nothing to announce today, but when I talk about that common core? You're seeing that common core in action which is that notion about being able to target other devices over time that run the Windows 8 engine. One of the questions i get from developers quite often is how do i think about targetting the Xbox platform, its a curated platform, I cant just go and host it up there. Well if you want to know how to sort of get a head start into thinking about developing for Xbox One, the logical thing to do is go build Windows 8 applications, because if you can see, we can sort of think about that having the same engine, its a logical extension in how we could move that forward.

other guy says

"this demo is showing web technologies, but we have other things like C,C++,DX,.NET all running on the common core. We'll have more demos later.